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International experience: Life in HWU

Patryk Cieślak, a postdoc who was awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie -Curie Individual Fellowship to join the University of Girona is working at the CIRS laboratory, under the supervision of Pere Ridao, to enable underwater intervention with a sense of touch. He is using our flagship vehicle

Girona500 equipped with an electric manipulator and a force/torque sensor to demonstrate missions requiring control of interaction forces between the robot and the environment. One of the scenarious that he tackles is the inspection of underwater pipes, which is highly relevant to the industry.

The expected experimental results will move foreward the state of the art of autonomous underwater intervention.

The researcher is now visiting the Ocean Systems Laboratory at the Herriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, where he works under the supervision of our friend Yvan Petillot. He is using the advanced underwater manipulator which is available at the lab to test his control algorithms and gain experience with the equipment, to be mounted on Girona500 in the near future. With this cooperation we will be able to achieve what was not yet presented in the field. This short stay in Edinburgh is also a great networking opportunity for Patryk, as he is working in an international team of students, postdocs and experienced researchers.

Patryk Cieślak is also taking part in the STRONGMAR summer school and the trials of a big national UK project called ORCA Hub. The goal of the project is to develop shore-operated autonomous and semi-autonomous solutions for inspection, maintenance and decommissioning of offshore energy infrastructure using marine, terrestrial and airborne robotic systems. Both events are happening in the north of Scotland, at The Underwater Centre, based in Fort William. Underwater vehicles and sensors will be used to demonstrate AUV mission planning and execution, operation of sensor networks and reconstruction of underwater enviroment with 3d vision systems.